GM’s CarPlay replacement software is off to a disastrous start - 9to5Mac::I don’t need to remind you that GM is ditching CarPlay starting with its 2024 model year EVs. We’ve covered…
The thing that kills me about this sort of thing is the complete lack of accountability. Working class people at assembly plants, dealers, suppliers will all feel the sting from the drop in sales. There’s some dipshit MBA at GM who made and pushed this decision. Any rational person could see that GM is not is a position to push their own infotainment system. Car play and android auto are beloved. Not having one or both is a deal breaker for new car purchasers. We will never know who this person is. Making such an outrageously bad business decision should result thing this person being blackballed from any kind of business role. But that will never happen.
These sorts of decisions can become more understandable when we incorporate the idea that corporate politics and management structure play a huge role in decision making. If the director of the division charged with building the software is close with the CTO or c-suite, they’re going to give that person the job and just make the numbers fit by adjusting the projections.
This is what’s referred to as the “agency problem” - that the people designated to act as the agents of others (whether you consider the others to be shareholders or employees) instead make the decisions based on the benefit to themselves, that’s a conflict of interest based on level of selection.
And in three years when it turns into a disaster, the director will have moved on to a new role or new company.
Becoming employee-owned can help with this. Union pressure can also help. Nothing stopping the unions from enrolling their members in a stock purchase plan to give them more votes/power/sway.
Working class people at assembly plants, dealers, suppliers will all feel the sting from the drop in sales.
Too many people make the mistake of projection. No one buys GM vehicles for their infotainment system. Any loss in vehicle sales will likely be offset by the increased income from selling user data.
That’s what they’re banking on.
They’re pushing a Google developed infotainment system. Android automotive.
so is everyone else
Eh not everyone. Ford Sync is developed with Blackberry currently, but Sync 5 will be with Google. FCA UConnect is all in house. Toyota uses a Linux base with Flutter on top. Tesla is in house. Rivian uses Android.
Tesla is also a Linux base.
yeah, it’s definitely not “developed with Blackberry” yes, it Runs QNX, yes Ford bought a good portion of Blackberry and hired even more of their developers when they opened the waterloo office, as does most touch screen infosystems before GAS. There is near 0 active development on SYNC 4, their first GAS system, 2024 Lincoln Nataulis. Uonnect also runs QNX, and Chrysler is actively d developing their GAS Allison. Pretty much everything GM put out since 2012 ran QNX, Tesla is shitty so I don’t care. I don’t know for certain on the foreign manufactures, but I have no reason to think they don’t have at least a GAS based solution still in the works.
Not having one or the other is a deal breaker? My guy, neither one ever crossed my mind while purchasing a car. Didn’t need it growing up, still don’t need it now.
No true in the least bit. I’ve worked in automotive for more than a decade, the vast majority of that time in automotive. GM is getting rid of Cp the same reason Apple got rid of Flash, they spend more time investigating issues causd by software that they can’t do anything about and AA/Cp issues are a removed. The project I am on currently has more that double issues with Projection Services than written all other components combined. Nearly half of all vehicle buy backs in North America are because of infotainment issues and like 80% of those are projection issues that are actually caused by the user’s phone. Thankfully I don’t deal with end users anymore, but have you ever tried to tell am apple fan boy that his iPhone is the cause of the problem…
Fair but that’s just the cost of business. People won’t buy cars without CP/AA unless they’re a cool EV, which GM vehicles aren’t considered.
Na I won’t buy a car without Android Auto even if it’s a cool ev. GM can diaf though
Galaxy brain solution to problem of car buybacks: make your cars so undesirable that none are sold to be bought back.
Can you give a concrete example where CarPlay has been implemented properly and a bug still exists?
It doesn’t matter if the iPhone is causing the problem. The issue is in the way GM’s software interacts with it. If it’s shit software, the working edge cases are a lot smaller, and more people have problems with it. An iPhone isn’t exactly some kind of niche device.
I won’t touch this with a 10 foot pole. Stupid.
If they really wanted to make a play at beating CarPlay and Android Auto, they should make a superior product, but include both of the alternatives in the car. As a customer, I would still consider buying the car if it included CarPlay. I won’t even consider it with this, which means I won’t even be in a position to try GM’s alternative. It’s too big of a risk to spend $30-40k on a new car and hope their custom infotainment isn’t trash and works nicely with all the data and apps I have in my smartphone.
That’s just unfair. You’re completely discounting this list of excellent, well supported software products created by legacy car companies:
…
The pay-to-play heated seats always work, though!
/s
It boggles the mind that the built in software in cars always runs (and often looks) like an early 2000s budget DVD player.
Why wouldn’t you touch it? You WANT this. TRUST US!
-GM, probably
I can honestly say that the phrase “my radio was stuck in a boot loop” is something I ever thought I’d need to say, but here we are.
Side note, you know what would be just absolutely perfect? Just Bluetooth. I don’t need to watch Disney+ while I drive. I don’t need up-to-the-minute notifications of the hottest celebrity news. I don’t need sports updates. I don’t need to know what my stocks are doing right now.
I just want to play music.
Maps are nice too. But other than that yeah, you’re right
Eh, it’s nice to be able to reliably control my music from the screen with Android Auto.
I can change songs from my steering wheel and I own a 2008 Volkswagen Gol which is the third world country version of the golf 2 more or less
You can keep your shitty touch screen I’d rather just have the physical buttons and Bluetooth
Ive never had any issues with it (other than the microphone not working anymore but the stereo itself is a refurb)
Sure you can change songs, but with Android Auto I can have it play a different album or playlist with voice commands. I can fast forward through ads in a podcast either by tapping the skip button or talking to it.
Honestly the bigger thing for me is the superior GPS without a separate unit though.
Honestly I just got a phone holder and use my phone independently of the car for all that. And voice commands never quite worked right in my experoence, but Spanish is the regional language where I live so maybe that has something to do with it.
I do see the appeal of having the screen integrated (when it’s actually integrated and not just a tablet hanging off the dash like someone Jerry rigged it there) but I feel rather heavily that at no point you should use a tactile interface in a car and that all and any functions that you can use in your car while moving should have physical buttons so you can use them without thinking
I struggle to imagine spending twenty minutes on the side of the road troubleshooting my car’s touchscreen, rather than just driving and dealing with it later. Maybe a quick reset, sure, but not more than that.
Who could have imagined that this might happen?
I mean, yeah there’ve been dozens of articles from unbiased analysts suggesting that GM was not in a position to take on this task, especially since Apple CarPlay and Google Android Play have already accomplished what’s necessary and are available to nearly 100% of GM’s customers, but a company the size and scope of GM couldn’t possibly be expected to listen to any of this analysis over these many months.
Who could have imagined that this might happen?
Look I don’t know about you but when I hear “quality software development” the first company that comes to mind is GM so
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This will be the most middle aged thing I ever post, but:
I’m Gen X. I feel like my generation, and maybe some millennials, got the best of both worlds. We know what it’s like to live in an offline world, including cars. You can drop me anywhere in the continental US and I can drive home without GPS, and probably without a map. We grew up on mixtape-fueled road trips and not having every inch of our commute planned and cross-checked. We didn’t know exactly what to expect in that upcoming town or city, because there was no Tripadvisor or Wikitravel.
We also know how convenient smartphones can be. It’s great that I don’t have to carry a camera plus a camcorder plus a Walkman plus an atlas plus a photo album plus a laptop plus a calling card plus a bag phone plus a notepad plus an encyclopedia plus a wristwatch plus a travel alarm clock plus whatever else I’m forgetting. But take that all away, and it’s at worst a mild annoyance.
So if I can’t use Android Auto, I’m just going to not buy that car. And if all cars suddenly stop shipping with Android Auto, then I’ll see that as a precursor to mandatory 30-second ads before being able to drive, and I’ll just buy whatever car remotely meets my needs AND makes it easy for me to install an aftermarket Android head unit.
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The backup camera is one of those things that you mock until you get one, then you can’t fathom living without it. But you can easily add an aftermarket one to an existing system.
I wound up paying for Subaru Starlink when I discovered that any dealership can sell it to you, and several sell it at steep discounts. I’m paying $10 / month for a 7-year package that includes emergency response if my airbags go off or the car flips, stolen vehicle location, and some other things I really don’t use. It basically stays out of the way. But when I had a Hyundai, I’d regularly get BlueLink popups about “special savings at your local dealership” and long story short, that’s the main reason I didn’t buy another Hyundai.
Are you me?
We have 2 cars in my family that have BS systems in them. We had to add our own Bluetooth adapters because the builtin crap sucks so bad.
I added a GPS head unit to a car in 2007 or so. It was nice for a few years. I swapped the factory unit back into the car 2 years ago.
Any phone has outperformed head units of any type for 10 years now. It’s more headache to use the built in crap than to use my phone.
But that will be… gasp …boring.
Jokes aside carplay in my car usually just plays podcasts, and sometimes displays navigation, though for the most part it is not needed as I learn the streets.
I use navigation all the time, or have it up at least, for the live traffic updates. Very useful!
Oh yeah, especially just to get a birds eye of an unfamiliar area.
GM products are complete garbage. Avoid at all cost.
Almost all first party OS’s from Car manufacturers are complete garbage, idk why anyone has any faith that a car manufacturer (And ancient “old guard” types at that) is going to have good code and good UI/UX
I mean, they’re using Android automotive. It’s not truly a first party OS.
They have a deal with Google for it.
GM: I removed Android Auto and replaced it with Android Automotive
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The deep sleep by walking away is infuriating.
Give me an option to reboot entirely from the settings menu
Wow one more reason not to buy GM not that I was planning on it to begin with.
Whaaaaat?! No way! I don’t believe it!
(…/s for those that need it)
I expect nothing less. And even if they do make the software stable and usable it will be quickly ruined by micro transactions and subscriptions for basic functionality.
Trash software from a trash company.
Yeah. GM doesn’t care about how good it is. Making it good is expensive. They can keep it crappy because you don’t really have any choice (other than buying from another manufacturer that will do the same). Plus they make money selling your data.
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I know this is probably off topic but I’m always stunned in these articles how simple things like this cause peoples (the authors) brains to just meltdown. They seemingly become so helpless when they don’t have a screen to tell them what to do and where to go. As a species we have been so heavily spoiled that simple inconveniences are seemingly incomprehensible to people who are surrounded and coddled by technology at every moment.
That’s not to say I’m perfect and haven’t fallen victim to these things myself, but I at least try to make do and overcome without complaining to the world how hard it is, since it’s not hard at all, just a bit inconvenient. At least I’m not making sandals out of discarded tires, shit could be worse than my car not being able to tell me where to go for a few minutes. (Not trying to say people in those conditions live shitty lives, they’re just subject to their environments; they very well may enjoy their way of living but from my western, coddled perspective, it sounds subjectively unpleasant and I’m greatful for what I have) /rant
More on topic, it’s really sad and unfortunate that so many software based products are shipping in such abysmal and borderline useless states until months after release. Too many things are made now with the presumption that “we just gotta ship it and we’ll fix it later”. It’s annoying as hell but understandable with games, it’s not a critical piece of software. A car though? Even if it’s the infotainment system it’s still awful. I love my '06 car, works great, gets me where I need to go, doesn’t harvest my data or relies on a battery to open the door.
I’m reminded of an article from 2015 about how a Jeep could be “hacked” while in motion and the attacker could apply the e-brake or kill the engine. Scary stuff, and with a thousands of pound rolling machine, it better not have such flawed software.
Anyway, I wish we could go back to an engine on wheels and a protective shell, don’t need all the “gizmos” so to speak.
I think it’s worth saying that the head unit failing in this scenario is very disruptive for two reasons:
First and foremost, the purpose of this journey in this car is to review the car. So if the head unit craps out, and he doesn’t make every effort to reboot it, and he mentions it in the review, he loses a lot of credibility from the users and industry folks. Could you imagine a review for a computer where it crashes or turns off, and the reviewer just says “welp, that’s all folks”?
My second point is that he is navigating in an unfamiliar place to a charger for the car. If you’re coming from Tesla or AA/CarPlay, this is something you expect to work flawlessly. And it’s part of the review that’s worth discussing whether or not it works.
In my opinion, even if he 100% knew where he was going, his behaviors are justified for a review.
